The Book Stacks

By Heidi Saxton, author of Behold Your Mother: Mary Stories and Reflections from a Catholic Convert

This week I’ve encountered two other books – one by a priest, the other by a popular Catholic apologist – that have either released or are about to come out. The same in YouTube: a half-dozen clips have titles very similar to the spectacular video my online publicist “Pump Up Your Books� did for my book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zR0003wTzQ&feature=related

So … what’s an author to do when there’s so much competition? The first thing … Don’t panic! See this as a sign that there is a very real “felt need� for the subject. People must be thinking about the subject you are writing about. The question is: How is your approach fresh, unique, worth considering over the other books, blogs, videos, and articles on the subject?

Going back to Behold Your Mother…

• The fact that I am an adoptive mother naturally gives me a leg up on books written by men on the same subject. My own motherhood gives me a more intimate perspective on what Mary might have thought, felt, and experienced as the mother of Jesus.

• The fact that I’m a convert to Catholicism who struggled to reconcile what I had been raised to believe about Mary and prayer, and what I had encountered in my new church home, puts me in a position to be able to help others who are going through the same struggle.

• The fact that I spent the first thirty years of my life in a variety of Evangelical denominations enables me to “speak their language� and connect with them about a subject that is close to my heart: how the mother of Jesus never hogs the limelight, but always draws us closer to herself in order to lead us closer to Jesus.

That’s not to say that this is enough, in and of itself, to guarantee that my little book will hit the bestseller list. Marketing a book is in many respects even more difficult than writing it in the first place. But then, I figure if I do my part … I can trust God to do His. I figure the Creator of the universe won’t mind giving me a hand up, when I wrote the book in the first place to honor His mother!

Send your mother (or yourself) “Tea with Mary� for her birthday or Mother’s Day! For details, go to http://beholdyourmotherbook.blogspot.com.